a badger at Avoncliff

Here's a badger looking down on the canal from Westwood towards Avoncliff, on a snowy night. That's my boat there with the fire going. I used my artistic licence to clear the roof of bikes, firewood, spare toilet cassettes and general clutter. Very handy thing, that licence.

I was going to draw something to do with mud, to go with this poem I wrote earlier in the year, and which is very relevant right now

It is our medium of communication,
we wade through it, it clags our bikes
and is the topic of our conversation.

In the polite streets of towns we enter,
we hail each other at first sight
of clouty boots, dank hats, the scent

of woodsmoke that has browned and kippered us,
tallowing our clothes and coats
when skulking in the warmth of boats
that snugly through the winter skipper us.

...but I just couldn't come up with an image that worked, and then I thought this would make a nice pic. So we get the romantic view of the canal instead.

It is pretty romantic, of course. And it did look like this back in March when the mini ice age hit.

But right now it's raining, raining, and then raining some more. 

And muddy, of course.

It's been a busy few weeks selling canal calendars and Etsy orders for cards and pictures. As we get close to Christmas I look forward to getting on with paintings and poems, because I've not been doing enough lately, and that makes me antsy. Though it's extremely nice that people like my stuff enough to want to buy it! I haven't got over the happiness that gives me, and probably never will.

Boater life around Bradford on Avon continues to be lively. Much repairing going on on the wharf - it's good to see an active boatyard at work. And we had a big party in St Margaret's Hall last week, as a fundraiser for the Floaty Boat Fund.

And the week before that we had a gathering to remember a friend who drowned. There've been three deaths like that this year. 

Tidying up yesterday, I found the bottle of rum that this friend gave me as a thank you for helping him with his engine. Maybe I'll finish it on New Year's Eve.

Have a good Solstice, Christmas and all that!

By the way, as this picture has been so enthusiastically received, I've done some prints, and you can get them here in my Etsy shop.